


Returning to Velaris

by shieraseastar03



Series: ACOMAF [15]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Healing, Wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 01:31:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19031995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieraseastar03/pseuds/shieraseastar03





	Returning to Velaris

Rhysand slammed into the floor of the town house, and Amren was instantly there, hands on Cassian’s wings, swearing at the damage. Then at the holes in Alec’s gut and Azriel’s chest.  Even her healing couldn’t fix both. No, they would need a real healer for each of them, and fast, because if Cassian lost those wings… Rhys knew he’d prefer death, any illyrian would.

  
“Where is she?” Amren demanded. Where is she where is she where is she. “Get the Book out of here” the High Lord said, dumping the pieces onto the ground. He hated the touch of them, their madness and despair and joy. 

 

Amren ignored the order while Rhys began to heal the horrible wound in his son’s gut.

 

Mor hadn’t appeared, dropping off or hiding Nesta and Elain wherever she deemed safest.

  
“Where is she?” Amren said again, pressing a hand to Cassian’s ravaged back. Rhys knew she didn’t mean Mor.

  
As if his thoughts had summoned her, his cousin appeared, panting, haggard. She dropped to the floor before Azriel, her blood-caked hands shaking as she ripped the arrow free of his chest, blood showering the carpet. She shoved her fingers over the wound, light flaring as her power knit bone and flesh and vein together.

  
“Where is she?” Amren snapped one more time but Rhysand couldn’t bring himself to say the words, as he tried to calm the sob on his throat.

  
So Mor said them for him as she knelt over Azriel, both of Rhys’ brothers mercifully unconscious. “Tamlin offered passage through his lands and our heads on platters to the king in exchange for trapping Shiera, breaking her bond, and getting to bring her back to the Spring Court. But Ianthe betrayed Tamlin, told the king where to find Nesta and Elain. So the king had them brought with the queens, to prove he could make them immortal. He put them in the Cauldron. We could do nothing as they were turned. He had us by the balls”.

  
Those quicksilver eyes shot to her High Lord, “Rhysand”. He managed to say “We were out of options, and Shiera knew it. She had a… those kind of visions she has and she knew that something could have in Hybern, so we made a plan. What we didn’t know what that… that everything could go so wrong…”.

 

“Azriel was shot, the King made us follow him, then Cassian’s wings... Then the King put a knife in Alec’s throat and said… said… that if Shiera did not go with Tamlin he would kill him so…” Mor explained and Alec continued, “The King made Shiera knelt before him, he made her get undress and began to…”, his eyes met his father’s, “I’m so sorry, I am really sorry…”. His voice broke and his hand went instantly to his gut. 

 

Rhys handed his Second in Command the vials that had inside his pockets. “What…?” Amren began, “It’s Shiera’s blood. She managed to make cuts in her wrists while Tamlin held her and yelled at us, and gave me these phials so you could heal faster”.

 

Amren and Mor didn't waste a second and made Cassian and Azriel drink the red blood as Rhysand did the same with his son.

 

“Continue” the grey-eyed female commanded and Mor went on “The King whipped her, he told her to count to ten, if she didn’t he would do it again and again. Shiera rebelled and she was whipped… fifty times…”.

 

“Then Alec was stabbed and Shiera looked at me, we… we both knew that… She pretended to free herself from the control Tamlin thought I’d kept on her mind. Pretended that she… hated us. And told him she’d go home, but only if the killing stopped. If we went free”.

 

“It’s my fault if I hadn’t been captured she hadn’t been forced to…” Alec began without been able to look at his father but Rhys stopped him, “It’s not your fault, I won’t let you think that. It’s mine, I should have planned better…”. “It's no one's fault, Rhys. Don’t blame yourself, not again” Mor ended.

  
“And the bond?” Amren breathed, Cassian’s blood shining on her hands as she slowed its dribbling. Mor explained “Tamlin asked the king to break the bond. He obliged”.

  
Rhysand thought he might be dying, thought his chest might actually be cleaved in two.

  
“That’s impossible” Amren said, “That sort of bond cannot be broken”. “The king said he could do it”. “The king is a fool” Amren barked, “That sort of bond cannot be broken”.

  
“No, it can’t” Rhysand said. They all looked at him.  He cleared his head, his shattering heart, breaking for what his mate had done, sacrificed for him and his family. For Nesta and Elain. “The king broke the bargain between us. Hard to do, but he couldn’t tell that it wasn’t the mating bond”. Alec started, “Does… does Shiera know…?”. “Yes” his father breathed.

 

“Go get her” Alec hissed,“Right now”.

  
“No” Rhys said, and hated the word.

  
They gaped at him, and he wanted to roar at the sight of the blood coating them, at his unconscious and suffering brothers and his injured son on the carpet before them. But he managed to say to them, “Weren’t you listening to what Shiera said to him? She promised to destroy him, from within”. 

 

Mor’s face paled, her magic flaring on Azriel’s chest. “She’s going into that house to take him down. To take them all down”. Rhysand nodded. “She is now a spy. What the King of Hybern does, where he goes, what his plans are, she will know. And report back”.  For between them, faint and soft, hidden so none might find it… between them lay a whisper of color, and joy, of light and shadow… A whisper of her. Their bond.

  
“She’s your mate” Amren bit at him, “Not your spy. Go get her”. 

 

“She is my mate. And my spy” Rhys said too quietly, “And she is the High Lady of the Night Court, I remind you. She said that she will go home but not with Tamlin, right now she is in Adriata. She will convince Tamlin to let her be in the Summer Court for a week and then she will go with him. In Adriata, she will explain everything to Varian and Cresseida, so we will win them and their Court as allies in this war. While she is with them we could send letters to each other and use the bond but not when she arrives with Tamlin. Then in the Spring Court, she will persuade and convince Tamlin that she had been under my control all these moths so he can trust her and she will be able to turn his men against him and take revenge against Ianthe”.

 

The Inner Circle kept quiet for a moment, processing what Rhysand had just told them.

 

“You mean to tell me” Alec breathed, “that my High Lady will be surrounded by enemies in a week?”. A lethal sort of calm crept over Mor’s tear-stained face.

  
“I mean to tell you” Rhys said, watching the blood clot on Cassian’s wings with Amren’s tending, beneath Mor and his own hands, Azriel and Alec bleeding at last eased. Enough to keep them alive until the healer got here. 

 

“I mean to tell you” he tried again, his power building and rubbing itself against his skin, his    
bones, desperate to be unleashed upon the world, “that your High Lady made a sacrifice for her Court, and we will move when the time is right”.

  
Perhaps Lucien being Elain’s mate would help, somehow. Rhys would find a way and then I’d assist my mate in ripping the Spring Court, Ianthe, those mortal queens, and the King  of Hybern to shreds. Slowly.

  
“Until then?” Amren demanded, “What of the Cauldron… of the Book?”.

  
“Until then” Rhys said, staring toward the door as if he might see Shiera walk through it, laughing and vibrant and beautiful, “we go to war”.

 


End file.
